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Early and timely prediction of patient care demand not only affects effective resource allocation but also influences clinical decision-making as well as patient experience. Accurately predicting patient care demand, however, is a ubiquitous challenge for hospitals across the world due, in part, to the demand's time-varying temporal variability, and, in part, to the difficulty in modelling trends in advance. To address this issue, here, we develop two methods, a relatively simple time-vary linear model, and a more advanced neural network model. The former forecasts patient arrivals hourly over a week based on factors such as day of the week and previous 7-day arrival patterns. The latter leverages a long short-term memory (LSTM) model, capturing non-linear relationships between past data and a three-day forecasting window. We evaluate the predictive capabilities of the two proposed approaches compared to two na\"ive approaches - a reduced-rank vector autoregressive (VAR) model and the TBATS model. Using patient care demand data from Rambam Medical Center in Israel, our results show that both proposed models effectively capture hourly variations of patient demand. Additionally, the linear model is more explainable thanks to its simple architecture, whereas, by accurately modelling weekly seasonal trends, the LSTM model delivers lower prediction errors. Taken together, our explorations suggest the utility of machine learning in predicting time-varying patient care demand; additionally, it is possible to predict patient care demand with good accuracy (around 4 patients) three days or a week in advance using machine learning.

Since its debut in the 18th century, the P-value has been an important part of hypothesis testing-based scientific discoveries. As the statistical engine accelerates, questions are beginning to be raised, asking to what extent scientific discoveries based on P-values are reliable and reproducible, and the voice calling for adjusting the significance level or banning the P-value has been increasingly heard. Inspired by these questions and discussions, here we enquire into the useful roles and misuses of the P-value in scientific studies. For common misuses and misinterpretations, we provide modest recommendations for practitioners. Additionally, we compare statistical significance with clinical relevance. In parallel, we review the Bayesian alternatives for seeking evidence. Finally, we discuss the promises and risks of using meta-analysis to pool P-values from multiple studies to aggregate evidence. Taken together, the P-value underpins a useful probabilistic decision-making system and provides evidence at a continuous scale. But its interpretation must be contextual, considering the scientific question, experimental design (including the model specification, sample size, and significance level), statistical power, effect size, and reproducibility.